Seattle Art Museum

The 5-story Seattle Art Museum needed a major expansion/renovation to accommodate a growing number of world class exhibits. Specific changes included 100,000 sq. ft. of new exhibit space, a new restaurant, new retail areas, a large forum and foyer for public gatherings, a special exhibit area, and several galleries that are flexible in their configuration in order to meet a wide range of challenges.

McKinstry provided design/build services for HVAC, piping, plumbing, fire alarm, and smoke control integration with the DDC building automation system.

The Museum HVAC system consists of floor-by-floor chilled water air handling units (AHU’s) with the following components: hot water heating; chilled water cooling; 30% and 85% carbon filtration; sound attenuation, and stainless steel double wall casing in wet cabinets. The Museum AHU’s serve constant volume terminal boxes with hot water heating coils and steam humidifiers. All wet components, whether pressurized or unpressurized, are located at the core of the building to avoid water directly over the galleries. This includes roof drainage, hot and chilled water, steam, waste, domestic services, toilet rooms, etc. Central plant services include: variable primary flow configuration using centrifugal water-cooled chillers with N+1 redundancy and heat recovery bundles, and steam service for serving humidifiers and making hot water.